Читать книгу The Notorious Pagan Jones - Nina Berry - Страница 11

The door to Daddy’s study was locked. Pagan rattled the doorknob again, not believing it. Daddy had never locked the office after Mama died; it was she who had kept the girls out, saying she didn’t want them spilling things on her important papers. Daddy had liked having them in there, settling Ava on his lap to act as his secretary or helping Pagan build a fort out of books.

It was late, but Devin Black was unaccountably still here. Pagan found him lounging with rather too much ease on the sofa in the living room, feet up on her mother’s rosewood coffee table, reading the New York Times.

“Can I have the key to my father’s office?” she said. “It’s locked for some reason.”

He didn’t look up from the paper. “I don’t have the key.”

She stared at him. He kept reading. She pressed down the irritation of being kept out of a room in her own house and put on a smile. More flies obtained with honey and all that nonsense.

“Who would lock it?” She arced her voice up to sound puzzled. “Daddy never locked it.”

The paper rustled with his shrug.

She’d changed into the silk pajamas and robe Helen had included in what they called her “trousseau.” For a moment, she imagined herself a frustrated housewife talking to her indifferent husband in a silly Rock Hudson comedy. “I do need to get in there and go through a couple of things. Who do you think would have the key?”

He folded down one side of the paper to look at her. “The trustee to your estate, I imagine.”

“Oh, right.” She sat down on the tasseled ottoman in front of her father’s favorite leather chair. The room still smelled like Daddy, of cigars and leather and citrus trees. She blinked, forcing her thoughts back to her plan. “That’s Daddy’s lawyer, Mister Shevitz. A bit too late to call him tonight, I guess.”

“I guess.” Devin slapped the paper back up and continued reading.

Pagan stared at his Italian leather shoes on the coffee table. “Speaking of it being late, isn’t it time you went back to your own lair?”

“This is my lair, for tonight,” he said from behind the paper. “I’m in the guest room.”

She found herself on her feet, her face flushing against all her efforts at control. “You can’t stay here!”

He laid the paper on his lap and folded his hands over it. “Oh, but I can. I’m your new court-appointed guardian.”

“But…” She didn’t like how this information was agitating her. “You’re a kid! You’re too young to be anybody’s guardian.”

“Not according to Judge Tennison.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.” She rounded the edge of the couch, rattled down to her bones. “I just met you today. You’ve got no connection to my family, no history of trust or…of anything!”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “There’s no need to get flustered. I won’t be lurking in your closet all night. Or sharing your bed.”

Heat shot up her spine. He was goading her now, and she wasn’t about to cooperate. She calmed her voice down to a level of rational concern. “What if the tabloid magazines found out that you and I spent the whole night alone in my house?”

He appeared unworried at the prospect. “They won’t.”

“What if Linda, Helen, or Carol sell that information to a journalist?”

That thought seemed to entertain him. “They won’t.”

“What if I sold that information?”

His eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t.”

“Why not?” She smiled. “It’s not as if I have a reputation to protect. Think of the delicious headlines—Killer Starlet Shacks Up with Her Blackmailer.”

“I offered you an opportunity—” he began.

“So you’d get an opportunity with me?” she finished.

“Don’t flatter yourself.” He put the paper back up and ran his eyes over the print, but she knew he wasn’t reading a word.

“And in Berlin?” she pressed. “How are you going to keep your court-appointed guardian eye on me there?”

“You’ll have your own room at the Hilton,” he said.

“But you’ll be in the room next door.”

He smiled, confirming her guess. “It’s new, but the Hilton’s already the best hotel in town. They have a restaurant on the roof with a great band that plays on fine summer nights.”

“Good,” she said, and walked decisively toward the door. “The music will cover your scream when I shove you over the edge.”

He laughed as she ran up the stairs to her room. She slammed the door, taking fierce pleasure in the wall-­shaking crash. Oh, he was irritating. But that would only make her focus more on how to get around him. He had to sleep some time.

She brushed her teeth and got in her fluffy white bed at 10:00 p.m., then turned out the light, wide-awake and determined to stay that way. She rolled from one side of the huge bed to the other, punching the pillows piled around her. Back in Lighthouse, Miss Edwards had confiscated her only pillow, a pathetic, paper-thin affair half filled with feathers from anemic birds. So Pagan had spent the past nine months sleeping without one. She’d dreamed about having all her pillows back. But now their lift and softness crowded oddly around her head. Quietly, she shoved one after the other onto the floor then lay back flat, listening for Devin’s footsteps.

She snapped awake at midnight at the sound of a lock clicking into place. She sat up. It sounded like a lock on her door. But it couldn’t be. She’d already locked her own door, from the inside. Fully awake, she tiptoed over to her door, listening as Devin’s steps faded down the hall and vanished into the guest room. She unlocked her door, turned the knob, and gently tugged.

It didn’t budge.

She pulled harder, fumbling for the key to make sure it was really unlocked. Her fingers met a smooth plate of metal above the doorknob. What the hell was that?

She flicked the light on her bedside table to life and stared at a brass plate she’d never seen before, newly installed over the doorknob. Someone had installed a dead bolt on the exterior of her bedroom door.

Not someone. Devin Black. He’d locked her in.

Towering, head-clearing rage surged from her heart and out of every pore.

She wasn’t a criminal. Well, if she was, she’d served her time. This was her house now, and she had every right to come and go as she pleased. How dare Devin treat her like his own personal prisoner? Guardian or no, he’d gone too far.

He thought he’d boxed her in, giving her no choice. Well, he’d learn soon enough. If you were willing to go far enough, to think hard enough, there was always a choice.

She donned a pair of pants and hoisted up the largest window overlooking the oak tree outside, glad to note the window was still well oiled and silent. She’d used it this way many times over the years, usually to sneak out to see Nicky.

The tree branch looked farther away than she remembered, but she’d been drinking back then. If she could bridge the distance between window and branch after chugging vodka, she could sure as shooting do it sober. She grabbed the house keys, shoved several pins into her hair, and lifted herself onto the sill.

In a blink she was straddling the branch and climbing down the tree, finding all the old handholds like good friends, waiting. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she sped down the side yard and entered the house again through the back door using her own key, careful to lock it again behind her.

Sit on that, Devin Black. She padded through the kitchen and down the hall to Daddy’s office door. Using the bigger bobby pin as a tension wrench, Pagan slid it into the lock the way Mercedes had taught her.

Two minutes later, the last pin clicked into place and Pagan turned the lock. The aroma of her father’s cigars hit her like a blow. It lingered, but Daddy was gone.

She clenched her fists, her newly pink nails biting into her palms. Focus. She had more important things to do here tonight than wallow in self-pity.

She made herself walk right up to her father’s leather chair and sit down in it. Daddy had opened the safe in front of her many times. She pulled aside the fake wainscoting on the lower part of the wall that concealed it and put her fingers on the dial.

Eleven and a turn left, then six, then two turns to the right, then forty-four. Pagan’s birthday. It was a stupid, sentimental number to use for a family safe, but her father had been that kind of man. How he and her hardheaded mother had ever fallen in love remained a mystery to Pagan.

The safe clicked open. She angled the desk lamp to shine into it and began piling file folders onto her lap. After the car crash, life had been too scary and hectic for Pagan to think about going through her father’s papers. Mister Shevitz had handled what needed to be done. But if there was anything to be found on Mama, Daddy would have put it in here.

Her hand hit the metal floor, and she stuck her head down to make sure she’d gotten everything. A lumpy rectangle threw a shadow near the back wall. She leaned in to pull it out.

There were two bundles. The first was wrapped in plastic and secured with rubber bands. Green glinted under the wrapping. A large stack of one hundred dollar bills.

Bless Daddy for keeping an emergency stash of cash.

The second bundle was an envelope full of folded paper, bound together with an older, nearly rotted rubber band. When she slid her index finger under it, the band snapped and flopped away like a dying fish.

The envelope was unsealed and yellowing at the corners. Pagan lifted the flap and carefully pulled out a stack of folded stationery on heavy white paper. Letters. She unfolded the first one with the care of an archaeologist unrolling an ancient papyrus.

Handwriting in black ink slanted across the paper in a jagged scrawl. She didn’t recognize it. Her breathing quickened as she read the first two words: Liebe Eva.

Her mother’s name, Eva, with a casual German greeting in front of it. Pagan understood enough German to know that Liebe was, at the very least, friendly. It didn’t have to be more than that.

But it could be.

Why in creation would her father have kept letters to her mother from someone in Germany? At the top the date was written: 30 Juni 1952. In European fashion, the day came first, then the month and year. June 30, 1952. Pagan had been seven years old. She’d turned eight that November.

She turned the expensive, textured paper over to see the signature. Hochachtungsvoll, Rolf von Albrecht.

Yours truly, Rolf von Albrecht?

Outside the office door, a floorboard creaked.

“Daddy?” she breathed, and caught herself.

Oh, God. For one wild moment she’d thought that sound was her father, coming home late. The urge to tear open the office door and throw her arms around him was almost overwhelming.

Steady, Pagan. No, it had to be Devin Black, patrolling her house in the middle of the night. He must be feeling as restless as she was. Thank goodness she had shut the office door when she came in.

Resentment of him and his control over her movements, her time, her life, bubbled up inside.

Damnable Devin might have all the power of a parent, but she’d sneaked out of the house on her actual parent, Daddy, plenty of times. Years of memorizing scripts had given her an ironclad memory for words on a page and the terms of the contract she’d signed were clear. The court-appointed guardian had to be on hand during the film shoot and thereafter at the court’s discretion.

Well, she wasn’t on the shoot, yet. She could give Devin Black a merry chase and still abide by the contract. She’d arrive in time for the movie, but on her own terms. Maybe by the time Devin caught up to her in Berlin, he’d realize he couldn’t treat her like a child.

Pagan grabbed her father’s empty briefcase, stuffed the files and the bundle of money inside, and closed it with two quiet clicks of the clasps. She’d finish reading the papers later.

She made her way carefully to the door and pressed her ear against the wood. Outside, wooden stairs squeaked. Devin was heading back up to his bedroom.

She let him get farther up before she silently opened the office door, listening. The faint footsteps continued above her, down the hall, back toward his room. His door rasped open. She waited for the soft thud of it closing before she tiptoed up after him. She was prepared to pick the dead bolt to get back into her own room, but there was no keyhole, just a latch she could flip. Moving in silence, she reentered her bedroom and began to pack.

* * *

At 5:00 a.m. she opened her door and looked back at the lilac bedroom. Pillows lay scattered all over the floor, except for the three she’d stuffed under the lacy white coverlet to look like her own sleeping body.

Devin Black would come to wake her up in a few hours. He’d be concerned when she didn’t respond and even more concerned when he saw the door wasn’t locked. He’d probably push his way into the room to throw back the coverlet. Then he’d see how she’d fooled him. He’d see her packed trunks still in the closet, waiting for transport to Berlin. He’d curse her when he saw that her smallest suitcase, the new Chanel purse, and the Dior suit dress were gone.

She was wearing that fabulous outfit now, her purse full of Daddy’s money, his papers in her bag. She was slick and chic and lighter than air. She floated downstairs and out the door. Through the clear air of the summer morning, she glimpsed the cab she had called waiting for her at the end of the drive. Let’s see Devin Black catch her now.